Changing default printing shortcuts

[tismanasas]

Hi Frank if you tried the steps I propose, you would see that it would actually SAVE the settings, and you would avoid the assumption that I didn't read the thread. anyway, the info is there, so anyone can feel free to make use of it, instead of waiting for HP to fix the issue in the next decade

[FrankThompson]

Ummm... yes, I did try the steps you suggested.  Did you try mine?

Unless you are using a different print driver, if you change from one shortcut to another, the settings revert back to the HP-supplied defaults.

Can you tell us what version of the print driver you are using?

[gillespe]

I'm an amateur ... but timanasas' workaround solved my problem. By using his backdoor to the print settings (through control panel) I was able to change the settings for the default print shortcut  'General Everyday Printing'  (to fast draft in this case). Using his/her approach you get the 'APPLY' button after making the changes .. which you don't get through regular 'print properties' or the HP solution center settings tab. I made the changes, closed all windows and confirmed that they were permanent via a file > print on an MSWord doc.

Skeptic that I am .. I doubt that HP will ever make it convenient to use less ink in future driver updates.

My system - WindowsXP, HP OJet4500, Print Driver Version 70.91.411.0

[FrankThompson]

gillespe,

I agree that it remembers the default setting for the default shortcut, but it hasn't saved the changes to the shortcut itself: you can confirm that by clicking on another shortcut and then back to "General Everyday Printing", even after clicking the "Apply" button.  If you ever wanted to use the "Fast/Economical Printing" shortcut, or the Two-sided (Duplex) printing" shortcut, you're stuck with the "Letter" paper size.

As mentioned before, the parameters for these shorcuts are NOT stored anywhere other than the hard-coded values in the driver program, and there's no way to delete the supplied shortcts: if you could at least hide them, that would be preferable, because you can set up your own versions.

Still waiting for that urgent upgrade HP promised...

[Tim_Moat]

Hello all,

I had been struggling with this issue and seem to have resolved it although I am still testing in a client/server environment to be 100%.

Firstly ensure you try this with local admin permissions on the workstation. We were seeing this in Windows XP SP3 so i've not tested in Windows 7.

It looks like the PRINTING SHORTCUTS pulls information from the machine based on its regional options . I.E. if your regional options are set to English (United States) it will assume LETTER as the default. This isnt a problem as you set A4 in the printing defaults. It only becomes a problem if you have a user that likes to use the PRINTING SHORTCUTS to change their printing method (our guys use the EcoSMART setting) as when you select it it changes to LETTER but also changes the default back to LETTER.

By ensuring your machine has a regional setting of an A4 'country', in my example English (united kingdom) or French (Belgium) this prevented the PRINTING SHORTCUTS from defaulting back to LETTER when toggling between them.

Weird issue...but the above seems to have resolved for me.

[TopazTJOT]

Thank you!  I slightly modified the advice to access the printer using Windows 8.1, but restting the default printing to Fast Draft worked fine.  

THANKS AGAIN!!!

[verbose]

Hi everyone,

I think I can shed some light on this issue after running into it today. It's really embarassing that such a glaring design flaw has not been fixed in all these years.

I am using Windows 8.1 with US English as the UI language, but am located in Germany and have set locale, location, number formats, measurement system, keyboard layout etc. all to German (Germany). The only thing that is US English is the display language. Still I am stuck with Letter as the paper format in all presets, when it should be A4. Nothing I can do on the UI can convince the printer driver to change the predefined presets from Letter to A4; the change to A4 only sticks until I click another preset. Nor is it possible to change the presets in any other way, e.g. to make duplex printing the default, which is also stupid.

After some research, I have modified hpcm4506.CFG from the driver source (both manually and using HP's driver preconfiguration tool) and reinstalled the driver, but that did not seem to have the intended effect.

Then I found the location where the presets are stored in the registry:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Print\Printers\HP {Printer Name}\HPPresetRoot\PresetPoolData]

There, it is at least possible to get rid of unwanted built-in presets by deleting them (as Frank Thompson asked) - however, you need to keep at least one, which is apparently needed as the basis for user-defined presets, which are stored as deltas only.

The contents of the presets pointed me to hpcm4506.xml in the System32\spool\drivers\... folder (plus a copy in the driver store). This file contains the following gem (for each preset):

              <!-- Locale Specific paper size defaults =============== -->
              <!-- US - 1, Portugal - 351, Japan - 81  -->
              <switch>
                <name>LocaleID</name>
                <case>
                  <name>1</name>
                  <select_option>Letter</select_option>
                </case>
                <case>
                  <name>351</name>
                  <select_option>Letter</select_option>
                </case>
                <case>
                  <name>81</name>
                  <select_option>Letter</select_option>
                </case>
                <case_default>
                  <select_option>A4</select_option>
                </case_default>
              </switch>

The main mistake is of course to have a default that is persistently reapplied. Windows does this right - you can set you locale to German, which sets the right defaults (e.g. metric units for measurement) - but if you then want to use US units for measurement, you can override the associated default. Not being able to modify the built-in defaults is rarely a good idea. If you do not allow that, you should be rather sure to get it right. Guessing based on the language ID is not the way to do that. Unfortunately, there is no setting for the Windows default paper size, but if you want to base your guess on anything, the location or the selected measurement system are much better indicators than the language.

Back to the xml, by replacing the above with

              <switch>
                <name>LocaleID</name>
                <case_default>
                  <select_option>A4</select_option>
                </case_default>
              </switch>

everywhere, I was able to change all presets to A4 - expect the 'Factory Defaults', which insist on always reverting to Letter for some reason. So I ended up deleting that preset (PresetPool:0) from the registry and now have a, hopefully permanently, letter-free setup. But boy, was this stupid.

Apparently grasping the subtleties of internationalization is tough - Microsoft screw up in their own way, by inferring the written language from the keyboard layout. Apparently, their engineers could not imagine that people would want to type English with a German keyboard layout. So if you do that e.g. in PowerPoint, each new element has its language set to German, overriding anything set in the presentation or master template.

- verbose